While reading, he's able to understand concepts in a story but trips up on pronunciations and creating contractions such as “won't” and “shouldn't.”

Third grade will be a pivotal time for Jacob, 8. If students don't read well by then, it's more likely they will struggle to succeed during the rest of their education, many studies show.

That's also when they begin to take standardized accountability tests, which are becoming more difficult this year and, in later grades, could hold them back if they don't pass.

“Students learn to read up until the end of third grade, and then start reading to learn,” said Celina Montoya, program director of SA Reads, the literacy campaign that tutors students like Jacob. “So if they are not up to par by then, it gets more difficult to keep them on track and they get left behind.”

Jacob is exactly the kind of student whom elected officials, educators, nonprofits and business leaders want to help, and they have banded together in unprecedented fashion to boost literacy efforts and perhaps become the city that best tackles the challenge.

One local elementary school is sending out parents, acting as ambassadors, to encourage other parents to read to their children, in keeping with national researchers' conclusions that students must have support at home to overcome reading problems.

About 12 percent of Bexar County third-grade students failed the state's standardized test for reading last school year, according to data analyzed by the nonprofit P-16 Plus Council of Greater Bexar County. About 37 percent of local third-graders were rated on their reading tests as “commendable,” meaning they have gone beyond simply passing and actually mastered reading.

Compared with other states, Texas students are reading below the national average, based on the results last week from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Scores on the standardized test also showed virtually no improvement overall in Texas students' reading.

At the same time, state budget cuts have led to larger class sizes, resulting in less one-on-one time for struggling students. One popular federally funded literacy program, Reading Is Fundamental, which for decades provided free books to children to keep, has been almost gutted.

Poorer districts like Edgewood and San Antonio said this is RIF's last year, since they can't afford to keep the program alive. Jacob is one of the roughly 840 students at Crockett in SAISD set to get his last few books from RIF by Christmas.

Programs in the works

That's where programs such as SA Reads are stepping in. The program is spearheaded by Literacy San Antonio and San Antonio Youth Literacy, among others, and aims to improve the reading skills of second-grade students through 30-minute reading sessions once a week with an adult.

Jacob has spent the last few weeks being tutored by Brooke Small, 19, an education student at St. Mary's University. Small said Jacob said his mother tries to read to him but doesn't always have time. Together on one afternoon at the Dan Cook Youth Center, the two read five children's books.

Small used a dry erase board to help Jacob understand how contractions such as “I'll” are made. They practiced pronouncing words such as “fence” and learn the tenses of “catch.” Then she honed in on his comprehension skills, asking him to recall parts of the book they read based on Vachel Lindsay's poem “The Little Turtle.”

“What was the thing that the turtle snapped at?” Small asked.

Jacob hesitated. Small tried again: “What are those little things that bite you?” poking at his arm playfully.

“Mosquito!” Jacob responded, his eyes lighting up for the first time.

Small said after just a few weeks, Jacob seems to be reading at the first-grade level more often.

SA Reads hopes to grow from 31 local schools, mostly in SAISD, now to 250 elementary schools in all San Antonio school districts in a few years. That would create a need for at least 2,500 volunteers.

The program is also part of a major education effort called SERVE SA announced last month by Mayor Julián Castro and state Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio. The goal is to get 500 volunteers this school year to serve as SA Reads reading tutors.

Aiming to reach educational goals outlined during the city's SA2020 vision-setting process, San Antonio also signed on to the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading last month. The city will compete with more than 150 cities nationwide that pledged to work on communitywide literacy plans to improve third-grade reading achievement in order to win the annual All-America City Award.

Gloria Rubio-Cortes of the National Civic League, which runs the competition, said the award has existed for more than 60 years but was never designated for improving reading achievement.

“It's because of this truly being a crisis,” Rubio-Cortes said. “I think mayors and leaders from around the country are seeing the dismal rates on reading and pressure is (there) if we want to stay competitive in this global economy.”

Several local districts — SAISD, Edgewood and Harlandale — have signed onto the national campaign. So have businesses, such as H-E-B, which recently launched its own campaign called Read 3 that's named after the idea that parents should read to their children at least three times a week. The company offers in-store book giveaways and literacy centers, where children and parents can take a break from shopping and read together. Many are in areas where no bookstores exist.

Against the odds

Recent studies by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found the toughest challenges in improving reading skills come in low-income areas, which tend to have more black and Latino families. Children there often don't have access to good health care, which leads to more school absences, are less prepared for school and aren't reading in summer months.

One local school, Loma Park Elementary, is going against the odds and has helped spearhead Edgewood's efforts to fight illiteracy. It became one of the first 12 schools in the country to be recognized as a “Bright Spot School” by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading this summer.

The median income in the Loma Park neighborhood is $37,125, about $10,000 less than the San Antonio average. But the school, with 780 students, has been rated “recognized” on state accountability tests for a decade. About 86 percent of its third-graders passed the reading test last year, 5 percent higher than the district's average.

One of the school's reading strategies is the hiring of three parents, called promotoras, who go into the neighborhood, converse with parents about how their child is doing in school, and offer help in locating assistance for any problems in the household.

“Sometimes the parents themselves don't know how to read, so we have to explain what they should be doing,” said Misty Hernandez, a promotoras. “And these are parents who grew up speaking English and went through our educational system.”

Loma Park also partnered with the Archdiocese of San Antonio to get its employees to read with children at school during the day, and has after-school programming called the “Club House” where students learn to read through instructions for games, recipes and activities like karate.